The Red Wheelbarrow
by William Carlos Williams
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
This Is Just to Say
by William Carlos Williams
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
An Apology
Forgive me
for backing over
and smashing
your red umbrella.
It was raining
and the rear wiper
does not work on
my new plum-colored SUV.
I am also sorry
about the white
chickens.
By F. J. Bermann
This Is Just to Say
(for Williams Carlos Williams)
I have just
asked you to
get out of my
apartment
even though
you never
thought
I would
Forgive me
you were
driving
me insane
By Eric-Lynn Gambino
Kubla Khan
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Or, a vision in a dream. A Fragment.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round;
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail:
And mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean;
And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight ’twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
Priests
By Leonard Cohen
And who will write love songs for you
When I am lord at last
And your body is some little highway shrine
That all my priests have passed
That all my priests have passed?
My priests they will put flowers there
They will stand before the glass
But they'll wear away your little window, love
They will trample on the grass
They will trample on the grass
And who will aim the arrow
That men will follow through your grace
When I am lord of memory
And all your armor has turned to lace
And all your armor has turned to lace?
The simple life of heroes
And the twisted life of saints
They just confuse the sunny calendar
With their red and golden paints
With their red and golden paints
And all of you have seen the dance
That God has kept from me
But he has seen me watching you
When all your minds were free
When all your minds were free
And who will write love songs for you ...
My priests they will put flowers there ...
The Death of Autumn
by Edna St. Vincent Millay
When reeds are dead and straw to thatch the marshes,
And feathered pampas-grass rides into the wind
Like Agèd warriors westward, tragic, thinned
Of half their tribe; an over the flattened rushes,
Stripped of its secret, open, stark and bleak,
Blackens afar the half-forgotten creek, -
Then leans on me the weight of the year, and crushes
My heart. I know that beauty must ail and die,
And will be born again, - but ah, to see
Beauty stiffened, staring up at the sky!
Oh, Autumn! Autumn! - What is the Spring to me?
THE DROWNING MAN
By Amelia O’Neal
The first time my brother drowned
I swam out to help.
Me—a lifeguard, strong swimmer,
resilient—
even at 15 years of age.
After I reached him in the murky currents
he panicked and pushed me under
the mud clogged my throat
and I glimpse the darkness where he made his second home.
But I kicked back and struggled free
to swim to the shore
and watched as his head sank down
while I, soaking wet with weeds in my hair,
watched
from the safety on the riverbank.
My parents—hysterical,
screaming and bleating and
waving their arms like windmills
thinking it would save him.
It did not.
When he washed up on the beach
I knew my brother was dead—
then
resurrected as a Prince of the Black—
having seen things there on the river bed,
through blurred vision of eyes open
under silty waters,
that would lurk in his visions forever.
The next time he drowned,
I had learned my lesson
and stayed at a distance
—chain-smoking
—sending light and love and positive thoughts
—shifting my weight from one foot to the other
hoping it would help.
It did not.
He drowned again, and again—
strange, as he was such a strong swimmer as a child
(though his strokes even then,
had a touch of madness to them).
Maybe it was a cramp,
or something chemical they say.
Maybe he didn’t wait an hour after eating.
Maybe the waters just liked him,
missed him each time he survived,
wanted to make him their own.
Each time he washed up,
bloated and one layer less,
all we could do was scream and watch
and he screamed and watched us
on the safety of a picnic blanket.
My sister
(yes, I have one, though she is rarely mentioned)
watched from the other side of the river
—stoic
—eyes glazed over by the waves of the incessant splashing
she must be in purgatory if my brother is in hell,
which leaves have an empty for me.
Though a heaven where you are forced
to watch your sibling die
again and again
with no ropes left
(they have all been thrown in)
might just be hell after all.
Maybe he likes the feeling
of fish in his lungs
Maybe they tickle his throat.
Maybe the lack of oxygen
reminds him of his first cigarette buzz.
The skies are clear—
I wish to lay on my back and float
finding mythical animals
and treasure chests
in the clouds.
But my brother—
he prefers the beasts of the seas
and he has not yet learned to float—
only to sink
again and again.
The Lake Isle of Innisfree
-- William Butler Yeats
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.
The Second Coming
William Butler Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Thursday
By Elaine Beckett
When the dusk comes in as quiet as this
as low as this, as dense as this,
like your whole world has gone back to where it began,
and you wonder how you got into this mess,
the kind of miss you cannot see an end to
as if it may already have ended very badly
and all you can hear is the sound of your own name
spoken deep inside your own head,
it is probably best to step back
from whatever kind of brink you imagine
you have reached
and think about something else,
something small and practical
like boiling an egg.
Why I Am Not a Painter
by Frank O’Hara
I am not a painter, I am a poet.
Why? I think I would rather be
a painter, but I am not. Well,
for instance, Mike Goldberg
is starting a painting. I drop in.
“Sit down and have a drink” he
says. I drink; we drink. I look
up. “You have SARDINES in it.”
“Yes, it needed something there.”
“Oh.” I go and the days go by
and I drop in again. The painting
is going on, and I go, and the days
go by. I drop in. The painting is
finished. “Where’s SARDINES?”
All that’s left is just
letters, “It was too much,” Mike says.
But me? One day I am thinking of
a color: orange. I write a line
about orange. Pretty soon it is a
whole page of words, not lines.
Then another page. There should be
so much more, not of orange, of
words, of how terrible orange is
and life. Days go by. It is even in
prose, I am a real poet. My poem
is finished and I haven’t mentioned
orange yet. It’s twelve poems, I call
it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery
I see Mike’s painting, called SARDINES.